


couldn’t push myself to quit oh this dangerous game

by smallredboy



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, Missing Scene, Post-Episode: s02e13 Mizumono
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-03
Updated: 2020-10-03
Packaged: 2021-03-07 23:07:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26795614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/smallredboy/pseuds/smallredboy
Summary: Before leaving to Italy, Will goes to visit Peter.
Relationships: Peter Bernardone/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Kudos: 33
Collections: Froday Flash Fiction Little & Monthly Specials 2020, Hannibal Bingo





	couldn’t push myself to quit oh this dangerous game

**Author's Note:**

> **fffc's 100th special:** hello  
>  **hannibal bingo:** animal rescue
> 
> title from _what am i becoming?_ by pop etc.
> 
> enjoy!

Will doesn't know if it's a good idea to come here. He'd heard the news, that proof had be found against Ingram and so he had started his trial, with Peter going back to normal life, to his animal rescue place. He doesn't know if he's welcome there— they've talked before, sure, and they seem to be in good terms, but it feels like stepping in when he isn't allowed.

He swallows thickly and knocks on the door before walking in. 

"Hello," Peter says.

Just one word and it makes him wildly uncomfortable. He clears his throat. "Hello. It's, um, Will."

"Oh, hi," he says. He doesn't look at him, of course. "I heard you - um - you got... you got stabbed."

"Yeah," he agrees. He looks at the animals, at the monkeys, the dogs, the cats. There's a variety there. The bird they found in the corpse is in a small cage, separate from the rest of them. Like a little throne. "I did. I have to go, uh, catch the man who stabbed me. He's off in Italy. So I thought I'd visit you before I did."

Peter nods. "Is he the man you came to the stables with? When I - when I did that to... to Mr. Ingram?"

He pauses. "Yes. That is him."

He thinks, briefly, that he could simply _stop_. He could stop looking for Hannibal, and hope that they'll catch him without his help. That he could settle down somewhere and visit Peter in his off time. He's cute, anyway, and he's gone through things similar to his own. He could stop. He could just stop. But he doesn't want to — he wants to follow Hannibal until the end of the Earth, until he gives himself up, until he can see him locked up.

"I see," he replies. "Are you healing okay?"

"Yeah." A pause. "What about you? Are you... alright?"

He looks at him briefly before looking back down. "Yes! I'm - I'm okay. I... um... I have been dealing with everything. I get to come back to my animals, so that's n-nice. I have... I have rescued a few more after Mr. Ingram..." He frowns. "After he let them all run away."

"Yeah," he says. "I'm sorry he did that." He looks around the place. It's messy, but it's homely. "There is... well. I am very glad they found proof against him. I just... I was there too, you know. I went through something very similar to what you went through."

"Yeah?"

"Mmhm." He looks for a chair and sits down when he finds one. "I was... I was sick. I had encephalitis. I was hallucinating, losing time, sleepwalking. He convinced me it was mental illness. He pretended they saw nothing in the brain scan." He clenches his jaw. "Afterward, he... he framed me for his murders. I was in jail for a while."

"Oh," Peter says. He looks at him briefly, before looking away again. "I... he wanted to frame me too, I think. But he - he didn't get to."

"Yes," he agrees. 

The difference between them, Will thinks, is that Peter has no interest in pursuing Ingram. If Ingram one day broke out of jail, Peter would be simply frozen in fear, would have an episode, something of the sort. He wouldn't search for him like he's searching for Hannibal.

"I saw myself in you," he says. "As much as people tried to shift the blame to you, I knew you were innocent. I knew it was him." He looks at him, doesn't touch him, as much as he would like to be touched. Horrible men, men without conscience, haunt this world, try to make it their own. They murder and maim and disfigure bodies, frame other people for their wrongdoings. There are too many men like this. Will wishes for a gentler world, where Abigail wasn't dead and Hannibal wasn't a murderer. The world he made for all of them, together.

"I see," Peter says softly. "So you are searching for him?"

"I am."

"What will you do when he is in jail?"

The question throws him into a loop, for a second. He's unsure what to reply with.

"I... I will go back to working in the FBI academy as a professor, I think," he says.

Peter hums. "It just... feels strange, to be without Mr. Ingram. Like, u-uh, like how it felt after I had to stop... stop working at the stables. Like I miss him."

He understands the feeling all too well. Ever since he woke up in the hospital, recovering from being gutted, he's missed Hannibal, a primal part of him aching for it, for the words that he whispered to him, the world he would never get. Jack, bleeding out because of him and Hannibal. Taking Abigail to the airport, going to Italy together.

It's a hurt unlike anything else, to have someone who is a part of him be _gone_. Away from his sight.

"I miss mine as well," Will replies. "But you are not like me, Peter. You're a good man. I... What I do isn't like what you do."

Ingram watched him be touched by Hannibal, ever so tenderly. Whispering through the chrysalis. He wonders what he thinks about it. If he knows, at some base level, that he is just like him. Peter isn't, though— Peter is nothing like him. He simply runs an animal rescue, tries to go through the motions. All that makes them similar is what they've gone through, the scars along their bodies, like clockwork.

"You'll stop missing him," he continues on. "The itch will pass. I promise."

He would never stop missing Hannibal, though. He knows that much. His itch will not pass.

Peter looks at him, and looks through him, before he turns away to touch one of the cages of his animals.

"Alright."

At least Peter will not miss the man who manipulated him, after a while. At least Peter will not suffer through the motions of wanting to be just like him. In another world, Will could sympathize with him more. Empathize until they were the same. 

But he can't, so he doesn't try to. He simply stares at him and takes his leave, thanking him for letting him talk to him. As he closes the door behind himself, he can't rub off the sensation that he's closed the last possibility of him ever living a normal life.


End file.
